Tag: WordPress (Page 111 of 220)

Articles, tips, and resources for WordPress-based development.

Don’t Over-Engineer Your Project

January 6, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

Over the last few days, I’ve been building the site that’s going to power the membership aspects of the WordPress Development course I’m working on. Initially, I went into the project like any other developer: I was ready to sit down, start writing code, handle a bunch of configuration, and generally tweak my WordPress installation at a level that I was convinced would take me a long time.

But it wasn’t like that at all.

And that’s something I know developers are plagued with more often than they – or we – would like to admit:

We over-engineer our solutions all of the time.

It doesn’t have to be like that, though. It takes a slightly different approach and it requires that we fight our natural inclinations, but it can be done.

It just requires a more pragmatic approach.

Must Read WordPress Articles 2

December 31, 2015 / Tom

About a week ago, I shared a round up of posts that I thought made for some good reading during the downtime the holidays inevitably bring.

Pocket

I also mentioned that I have a tendency to throw things into Pocket and leave them there until I have time to read them on my own. Whenever I come across a handful of really good WordPress articles, I’ve been saving them until I have enough to share here on the site.

Ship Fast and Iterate

December 29, 2015 / Tom / 0 Comments

One of the phrases many involved in software will likely hear (especially early in their career) is “Ship fast and iterate.”

And there’s definitely something to that when it’s been implemented correctly. But when I’ve watched others trying to adopt this idea when building something for WordPress, it seems like something gets lost in translation.

Ship Fast and Iterate

No, this is not a critique of other companies or developers. No, this is not saying that we’re all like this. No, this is not saying that I’m above this.

If anything, it’s a reflection on the idea and what it means for those of us who are building things on WordPress and how we may be more more mindful of the work that we’re doing.

Don’t Report Issues on GitHub

December 28, 2015 / Tom / 0 Comments

In the admittedly short time I’ve worked in software development, I’ve rarely seen a site like GitHub have such a level of success especially for something as nerdy as version control.

Linktocat has always been one of my favorites.

Don’t get me wrong: Version Control is a must have for any serious software development shops – be it a single person or a team of people. But the fact the site works so well, has a variety of quality clients, and doesn’t look like, y’know, developers built the site is such a huge plus.

And as much as I love open source and what GitHub has brought us, I often see development shops asking users to report issues on GitHub whenever they see them.

That’s never sat well with me.

The thing is, even though GitHub looks good, even though it works well, and even though it does its job well at doing what it’s meant to do, it’s still targeting an audience that’s very rarely going to be our core audience.

Must Read WordPress Articles

December 24, 2015 / Tom

During the holidays, most of us slow down a bit from what we’re used to doing every day so that we can actually hang out with friends and family or so that we can catch up on something we’ve waited a long time to do.

You know, like reading or a playing a game or something like that.

Pocket

One of the things that I have a habit of doing is throwing a ton of content into Pocket and then planning to read it when I actually have time.